Manage Your Writing

This week: Check your organizational culture

My late friend Kitty Locker, in her book, Business and Administrative Communication, wrote:

If you think your boss doesn't want you to write simply, ask him or her. A few bosses do prize flowery language. Most don't.

You may think you work in an organization that favors fancy, pretentious language. But it's worth checking.

This week, look at the e-mail and other writing you get from your boss, and from people at higher levels. If it's concise and clear, look for ways to learn from it. If it's not, look for ways to change your organizational culture--and advance yourself--by becoming the model of a clear, effective writer.

This week: Don't be ridiculous

Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, also wrote of the first business how-to books in English: The Complete English Tradesman, published in 1745 (!).

In that book, he wrote:

A tradesman's letters should be plain, consise, and to the purpose. . . . He that affects a rumbling and bombast style and fills his letters with compliments and flourishes makes a very ridiculous figure in trade.

This week, as you revise, see if your style is "rumbling and bombast." Make sure is is not, but rather "plain, concise, and to the purpose."

This week: Be economical

Norman R. Augustine, president and CEO of Martin Marietta, once calculated the relationship between thickness and dollar amount of government contract proposals. After reporting the result, he wrote, "If all the proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, it would probably be a good idea."

Some trainers and textbooks talk about conciseness or brevity. I prefer the word economy. It suggests dollars, pounds, and euros, and reminds us that business is about money. As someone once said, in the game of business, money is how we keep score.

This week, as you revise your drafts, look for ways to save money, especially by making smaller demands on your readers' time.

This week: Answer your reader's "WIIFM?"

All readers ask, consciously or unconsciously, the question "WIIFM?": "What's in it for me?"

This week, as you plan and revise each piece of writing, check to make sure you're answering that question.